“A TURNING POINT IN PAINE'S POLITICAL THINKING": FIRST EDITION OF PAINE’S LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE ABBÉ RAYNAL, 1782
PAINE, Thomas. Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal on the Affairs of North-America: In Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America are Corrected and Cleared Up. Philadelphia: Printed by Melchoir Steiner, and Sold by Robert Aitken, 1782. Octavo, period-style full speckled sheep gilt, red morocco spine label; pp. 77.
First edition of Paine’s response to French historian Raynal’s 1780 attack on the American Revolution, this major work establishing the Revolution as a benchmark in human history and Paine as one of the “first modern political thinkers to universalize a single revolution.”
When French historian Raynal's 1780 Révolution was translated into English in 1781, it triggered immediate controversy by claiming Americans "declared independence only because they objected to paying British taxes" and had rejected Britain's 1778 peace offer. Paine, enraged, promptly issued this Letter, arguing Raynal was "dead wrong" in viewing the American Revolution as "a temporary upheaval generated by exaggerated anxieties about piffling taxation… Letter to the Abbé Raynal was among the most eloquent, tightly argued and insightful of Paine's essays… He objected to Raynal's use of the term revolution in its classical sense of a cyclical process, which— like the rotation of the moon around the earth— ends where it starts… Paine argued that the American events were revolutionary in that they had irreversibly altered both the structure of government and the popularly shared principles and perceptions according to which its power was now exercised… he was among the first modern political thinkers to universalize a single revolution" (Keane, 230-31).
Paine's angry yet powerfully reasoned
Letter declared the Revolution to be "the first war to be based on principle in the history of the world" (Fruchtman, 144). Having sent 50 copies to Washington, Paine "attached so much value to this document that he subsequently often introduced himself as the author of '
Common Sense and the
Letter to Abbé Raynal'… This rigorous piece of writing marked a turning point in Paine's political thinking" (Vincent,
Transatlantic Republican, 158-9). First edition: precedes the first English edition. Postscript dated in print "Philadelphia, August 21, 1782," followed by two-line errata (77). Without blank leaf I4 as usual, no priority established; without half title. Tiny pinholes from original stitching. ESTC W13412. Howes P25. Sabin 58222. Adams,
American Controversy 82-66a. Evans 17651. Gimbel-Yale 36. Contemporary owner signature dated "Sept. 3, 1782" to first page of Introduction.
Text fresh with only lightest scattered foxing, minor marginal chipping to early leaves, including title page, not affecting text. An extremely good copy.